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Peter D. Schiff

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The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy: How to Save Yourself and Your Country Second Edition, Revised, Kindle Edition

by Peter Schiff (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

1,108 ratings

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“This book is one of the best assets conservatives can turn to in making the case for fiscal responsibility and capitalism.” —Grover Glen Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform

In The Real Crash, New York Times–bestselling author Peter D. Schiff argues that America is enjoying a government-inflated bubble, one that reality will explode . . . with disastrous consequences. Schiff demonstrates how the infusion of billions of dollars of stimulus money has only dug a deeper hole: the United States government simply spends too much and does not collect enough money to pay its debts, and in the end, Americans from all walks of life will face a crushing consequence.

Our system is broken, Schiff says, and there are only two paths forward. The one we’re on now leads to a currency and sovereign debt crisis that will utterly destroy our economy and impoverish the vast majority of our citizens.

If we want to avoid complete collapse, we must drastically reduce government spending—eliminate entire agencies, end costly foreign military escapades and focus only on national defense—and stop student loan or mortgage interest deductions, as well as drug wars and bank-and-business bailouts. We must also do what no politician or pundit has proposed: America should declare bankruptcy, restructure its debts, and reform our system from the ground up.

Persuasively argued and provocative, The Real Crash explains how we got into this mess, how we might get out of it, and what happens if we don’t. And, with wisdom born from having predicted the Crash of 2008, Peter Schiff explains how to protect yourself, your family, your money, and your country against what he predicts.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Peter Schiff sounded the alarm about the housing bubble created by the Federal Reserve and predicted the bubble's inevitable collapse, yet he was ignored by mainstream economists and ridiculed by the media. In The Real Crash he is at it again, illustrating how the financial crisis of 2008 is nothing compared to what is coming down the road. Peter Schiff is right again. I hope more people listen this time.” ―Ron Paul; Congressman (TX-14) and three time Presidential Candidate

“Peter Schiff's new book "The Real Crash; America's Coming Bankruptcy" is written in the same blunt and punchy style that makes him a favorite guest on my Fox News show. It's not just what he says, but the fact that he lives what he says. Unlike Some authors who talk about business as spectators, Peter doesn't speak from the ivory tower of academia or from the comfort of an anchor chair. He runs a real business and fights every day to make it a success in spite of all the government's tax and regulatory policies.” ―Mike Huckabee; Host of The Huckabee Show and former Arkansas Governor and Presidential Candidate

“America's political leaders should have taken Peter's 2007 book, Crash Proof, to heart before they tried to borrow, print and bail us out of trouble. Today, they -- along with all Americans -- absolutely must take heed of The Real Crash. Peter Schiff understands the marketplace, and he understands the consequences that occur when government attempts to manage that marketplace. Pay attention, America!” ―Gary Johnson, Former governor of New Mexico and presidential candidate

“In ‘The Real Crash,' the fearless Peter Schiff has written the most compelling argument against central economic planning and debt-financed consumption to come along since our present woes were exacerbated in 2008. His explanations of how unfettered free choices will produce prosperity, and how ending the Federal Reserve, abolishing the IRS, and returning to the gold standard will tame the federal beast are among the most forceful and cogent I have seen. He even explains how anyone can prosper from government stupidity in these perilous times. And he does all this in a breezy and readable format.” ―Judge Andrew P. Napolitano, Senior Judicial Analyst, Fox News

“Peter Schiff is an original thinker, a man of startling insight and honesty, in many ways, a genius. I have learned that you disagree with him at your peril. He is one of the few men of finance of whom I wish I could say I had paid more attention to. Live and learn. Read and learn.” ―Ben Stein; author, actor, political and economic commentator

“Peter Schiff says the Fed's bubble machine is destroying the American economy and he is right. Zero interest rates and QE are crushing savers, rewarding speculators and enabling the Washington politicians to issue endless debt. Every concerned citizen should read this.” ―David Stockman; Former OMB director under President Ronald Reagan

“Peter Schiff has been painfully right about the downward spiral of the U.S. economy over the last four years. Easy money, rising tax rates, and unbridled debt are a prescription for economic disaster. Let's hope Barack Obama reads this.” ―Stephen Moore, Economist and Fox News commentator

“While many of us have justifiably focused on how high taxes are economically corrosive, Peter Schiff does a great job of explaining why government spending and debt are even worse. As we continue grappling with the monster of a runaway federal government, this book is one of the best assets conservatives can turn to in making the case for fiscal responsibility and capitalism.” ―Grover Glenn Norquist; President of Americans for Tax Reform

“Peter Schiff was one of the few pundits who predicted correctly the 2008 economic and financial collapse. Now, he makes a compelling case in a highly readable book that the day will come when the world stops trusting the dollar and the ability of the US government to pay its debts. I agree with him that 'Then we'll get the real crash'.” ―Marc Faber; Editor, The Gloom Boom & Doom Report

“You need to know his case whether he is right or not if you are going to be prepared for this decade.” ―Jim Rogers; Investor and Bestselling Author of "A Gift to My Children" and "Investment Biker"

About the Author

PETER D. SCHIFF is an American investment broker, author, and financial commentator, and was a candidate in the 2010 Republican primary for the United States Senate seat from Connecticut. He frequently appears as a guest on CNBC and Fox News, and is the host of the radio show and podcast The Peter Schiff Show.He is the author of the New York Times bestselling Crash Proof and Crash Proof 2.0, as well as The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets, which was also a Business Week bestseller.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1
Where We Are and Where We Are Headed

AS I STATED IN THE introduction, the real crash I predicted in my first book is still coming.
You see, before 2006, I had been predicting an economic catastrophe in the United States, with the burst of the housing bubble being the catalyst. Once that bubble burst and major banks went to the brink of failure, people began crediting me with “calling the crash.” But what we saw in 2008 and 2009 wasn’t the crash. That was the overture. Now we have to sit through the opera.
The economic unpleasantness of those days was definitely part of the real crash, but only because of the way our politicians responded—replacing one government-created bubble with another, thus putting our economy at even greater risk.
The same bubble machine that fueled the last two boom-bust cycles—the Federal Reserve—is already back in high gear, and we must turn it off. The Fed needs to stop fueling inflation and start sucking dollars back out of the economy. It also needs to let interest rates rise. When the Fed does these two things, Washington’s free ride will end—it will no longer be able to borrow at near zero interest. As a result, Congress will have to slash spending, fix our entitlements, and generally shrink government.
These are the right things to do today—they were the right things to do ten years ago. But soon they will become inevitable. We will have no choice.
My past books predicted the crash. This book goes a step further and lays out the steps we need to take in order to make this crash as painless as possible and to rebuild in the aftermath. We need to wind down entitlements, eliminate many government functions, and stop playing with the money supply and interest rates. America needs to start making things again, and the government needs to stop taking. As individuals and as a nation, we need to get out of debt.
And ultimately, we’ll have to face up to the fact that we can’t pay off all our debts.
The later chapters spell out the solutions, but these first two chapters describe the problem.
Our economy today is once again built on imaginary wealth. Like the proverbial house built on sand, it will collapse. When that happens, when America’s tab finally comes due, it will probably be as bad, or worse, than the Great Depression. You’d better be ready for it.
From a Dot-Com Bubble to a Housing Bubble to a Government Bubble
To understand how bad things are and where we’re headed, let’s quickly go back a decade or so, and retrace the steps that brought us here.
Throughout the 1990s, the Federal Reserve injected tons of money into the economy, which fueled a stock bubble, focused particularly on dot-com companies. In 2000 and 2001, when the stock market turned down and unemployment started to creep up, that was a correction.
Assets that had been overvalued (such as stocks) were returning to a more appropriate price. The dot-com and stock market bubble had misallocated resources, and while investment was fleeing the overvalued sectors, inevitably the economy shrunk and unemployment rose while wealth became more rationally allocated around the economy.
Readjustments in the economy involve short-term pain, just as the cure to a sickness often tastes bitter. Short-term pain, however, was unacceptable to the politicians and central bankers in 2000 and 2001.
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan manipulated interest rates lower. This made borrowing cheaper, inspired more businesses to invest, and softened the employment crunch. But the economy wasn’t really getting stronger. That is, there weren’t more businesses producing things of value. As there were few good business investments, all this cheap capital flowed into housing.
As housing values skyrocketed, Americans were getting richer on paper. This made it seem as if things were okay. In other words, Greenspan accomplished his goal of forestalling any significant pain. By the same token, he also kept the economy from healing properly, which would have laid the foundation for a stronger and lasting recovery.
When market realities started to bear down on the economy, and the housing bubble popped, with the broader credit bubble right behind, the government was running out of things to artificially inflate. So the Fed and the Obama administration decided to pump money desperately into government.
I’ll explore this “how-we-got-here” story in more depth in Chapter 2, but for now, I’ll make this point:
Just as the housing bubble delayed the economic collapse for much of last decade on the strength of imaginary wealth, the government bubble is propping us up now. The pressure within the bubble will grow so great that the Federal Reserve will soon have only two options: (a) to finally contract the money supply and let interest rates spike—which will cause immensely more pain than if we had let this happen back in 2002 or 2008; or (b) just keep pumping dollars into the economy, causing hyperinflation and all the evils that come with it.
The politically easier choice will be the latter, wiping out the dollar through hyperinflation. The grown-up choice will be the former, electing for some painful tightening—which will also entail the federal government admitting that it cannot fulfill all the promises it has made, and it cannot repay everything it owes.
In either case, we’ll get the real crash.
The National Debt
As a professional investor, when I study the American economy today, I see debilitating weaknesses. Most obvious is the debt. As this book went to press, the national debt was $17 trillion. That works out to approximately $140,000 per taxpayer. Let’s talk a bit about what this means.
Whenever the government wants to spend money it doesn’t have, it borrows. Our government borrows by selling T-bills and Treasury bonds, or “Treasuries.” The buyer gets an IOU, and the government gets cash. So, various bondholders—individual investors, U.S. banks, the Chinese government, the Federal Reserve, even parts of the U.S. government—hold in aggregate $17 trillion in IOUs. These bonds and bills come due all the time, and typically, the Treasury pays them off by borrowing again.
Every day, the debt grows. First, it grows because it accumulates interest. In 2010, taxpayers paid $414 billion in interest on the national debt, but that wasn’t enough to keep the debt from growing. Another reason the debt keeps growing: our government keeps borrowing more in order to spend more.
Barack Obama’s $800 billion stimulus in 2009, for instance, was entirely funded by borrowing. In Fiscal Year 2011, the U.S. Government spent $3.6 trillion, but brought in only $2.3 trillion in revenues. The extra $1.3 trillion—the budget deficit for the year—was paid for through borrowing.
As a businessman or the head of a household, if you spend more than you earn in a given month, you’re doing one of two things: you’re either spending down your savings, or leaving a balance on your credit card. But the federal government has no net savings. That leaves only one option: every dime of deficit is added to our national debt—plus interest.
State governments are in the red, too. Nearly every state ran a deficit in 2010, and the aggregate of state debt is about $1.3 trillion. Local governments owe a combined $1.8 trillion. Add that $3.1 trillion in state and local debt to Uncle Sam’s $17 trillion, and our public debt tops $20 trillion. Much worse, when off-budget and contingent liabilities are thrown in, total government debt tops 100 trillion!
State of Bankruptcy
In some ways, our state governments are in worse shape than the federal government. While most states don’t have huge ticking time bombs like Medicare, they have just as much—or more—trouble breaking even.
For Fiscal Year 2012, more than forty states were in the red. Twenty-seven states (a majority of states and a vast majority of the country) were running deficits of 10 percent or more, according to data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
California is probably the most famous of the insolvent states because of the massive size of its annual shortfall: more than $25 billion in 2012.
To poison the fiscal waters so completely, it took a special brew of big-government liberalism, anti-tax-hike ballot measures, powerful public employee unions, and ridiculous public pension laws. These factors created what Manhattan Institute scholar Josh Barro calls “California’s permanent budget crisis.”
Indeed, since 2005, the California state legislature has been fighting an annual “crisis.” Barro explains:
California’s permanent budget crisis stems from institutional failures. Ballot measures have made it nearly impossible to raise taxes or cut spending, and have cemented the idea in voters’ minds that they can get government services without paying for them. The state has repeatedly failed to reform its inefficient tax code (which relies too much on highly volatile taxes on high-income people, and not enough on property taxes) or to tackle the problem of runaway public employee compensation.
California is special in many regards. (For instance, no other state has city managers paying themselves nearly a million dollars a year, as the folks of Bell, California, were caught doing.) But many of the problems with California are present elsewhere.
One is the tendency of states to go wild during boom years in revenue. Many individuals who did well during the boom years bought McMansions with huge mortgages on the assumption that every year would be just as good. Many states did the same thing. Nevada is a classic example. Nevada enjoyed faster population growth than any other state in the 1990s and most of the 2000s. This coincided with the nationwide housing bubble, and sent home prices through th...

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00FILC2B6
Publisher ‏ : ‎ St. Martin's Press; Second Edition, Revised (April 8, 2014)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 8, 2014
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1.4 MB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 463 pages
Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 1250046564

Best Sellers Rank: #508,243 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
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- #303 in Economic Policy & Development (Kindle Store)
- #521 in Political Economy

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Peter D. Schiff

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Peter D. Schiff is a seasoned Wall Street prognosticator best known for his accurate predictions of the performance of the stock market, commodities, gold, and the dollar. He is one of the few unbiased investment advisors to have predicted the current bear market and positioned his clients accordingly. Schiff began his career at Shearson Lehman and joined Euro Pacific Capital in 1996, becoming President of the firm in 2000. He appears frequently on Fox Business News, CNN, CNBC, and Bloomberg TV, and has been quoted in such publications as the Wall Street Journal, Barron's, the Financial Times, and the New York Times. Schiff is also the author of the original edition of Crash Proof as well as The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets, both published by Wiley.

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Customers find the book informative and well-written, appreciating its masterful matter-of-fact style and clear explanations. Moreover, they consider it a must-read that provides great solutions and serves as an excellent economics primer, with one customer noting it's an amazing follow-up to Crash Proof 2.0. However, the political content receives mixed reactions, with several customers finding it too politically partisan. Additionally, opinions about the book's pacing are divided, with some finding it boring.

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Customers find the book very informative and helpful for understanding the subject matter, with good analysis and common sense throughout.

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"This book was outstanding, a must read for every United States citizen. Peter Schiff doesn't just talk the talk, he walks the walk...." Read more

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146 customers mention "Ease of understanding"133 positive13 negative

Customers find the book easy to read and understand, praising its masterful matter-of-fact writing style.

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"...In his book he offers easy to follow history of why our financial system is so risky, from the moral hazard of the FDIC, to the inflationary..." Read more

"A great outline covering numerous facets on how the government has destroyed our currency, our economy and used a multitude of various methods to..." Read more

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Customers appreciate the book's advice, with multiple reviews highlighting its great solution ideas. One customer notes that it provides well-reasoned solutions, while another mentions that it exposes planning options.

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Customers find the book excellent and consider it an amazing follow-up to Crash Proof 2.0, with one customer noting its well-constructed nature.

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"...This is an amazing follow up to Crash Proof 2.0, if I could give it 6 stars I would," Read more

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"...that there's nobody better at explaining macro-economics and sound money policy to the masses than Peter Schiff...." Read more

"...; personal savings are as low as they've ever been, and personal debt as high; housing is still a mess, and banking not much better; and, to top it..." Read more

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"...n't give a five star is simply because I think the author is too optimistic about Chinese economy and downplayed the burden of bad Chinese political..." Read more

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Kyle R. Johnson
Public Policy Spiced With Investment Advice
Reviewed in the United States on June 12, 2012
Verified Purchase

Anyone who knows anything about my regular media consumption habits probably has a good basis for suspecting that Peter Schiff is my favorite pundit, radio show host, and writer. (That suspicion would probably be correct, although I hesitate to pick favorites.) I don't remember where I first heard of Peter Schiff, but I think it was when he ran for Senate in Connecticut in 2010. He was one of the few Republican senate candidates across the country in that election that I thought was really carrying the banner of liberty. I ended up donating some money to his campaign and also making a few hundred phone calls on his behalf as a volunteer. Yeah, I guess you could call me a regular "Schiff-head."

Peter's most remarkable quality has been his ability to speak what he thinks is the truth to any audience, without any fear of conflict, and without any regard for hurt feelings (although he rarely, if ever, makes it personal). This has lead to some hilarious interviews, congressional testimony, and speeches. Probably my favorite was his speech before the Mortgage Bankers Conference in Las Vegas in 2006. He laid out, in stunning detail, exactly why most of the members of the audience were about to go belly up financially. In the Q&A period one of the questioners even asked, "So are you just saying I should slit my wrists?" Obviously Peter wasn't advocating suicide, but his thesis was proven correct a year later. The housing market collapsed, and we're still (unfortunately and unnecessarily) reeling from that shock.

But Peter doesn't think that the housing bubble was the worst of what's in store for America's troubled economy. Not even close. In the first two chapters of his latest book, "The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy, How to Save Yourself and Your Country," Peter argues that the government's actions in response to the housing bubble (TARP, Stimulus I and II, Quantitative Easing I, II, and potentially III, etc.) have led to unsustainable levels of government debt, and that either the banking sector will be wiped out when the government defaults on it's debt if interest rates rise, or the economy will be wiped out by hyper-inflation if the Fed decides to fix interest rates at perpetually low levels.

The next nine chapters are focused on what the government can do in order to fix the economy with minimal pain. I say "minimal" pain, because the fact is there is going to be a lot of pain no matter which course we choose to go. We may have more or less pain, sooner or later, but the pain is unavoidable at this point. Peter's prescriptions for the economy are more or less the standard laissez-faire policies that any free market type would advocate: sound money, deregulation, and better tax policy. He specifically advocates for the FairTax, which would throw out the entire federal tax code and all the taxes within it in favor of a single national sales tax. I like that idea a lot. (Although, of course, the best tax is no tax at all.)

Peter takes special care in advocating the destruction of the "third-rails" of politics: Medicare and Social Security. It's obvious, to anyone who has bothered to look at the numbers, that these programs are unsustainable. They simply can't continue as they are currently structured forever, or even much longer. Medicare alone will bankrupt this country in short order if it is not changed. Peter advocates means testing these benefits so that they only apply to the people who really need them, instead of feathering the nests of well-off seniors. As he points out, the benefits end up as just a subsidy for whoever ends up inheriting these wealthy seniors' wealth since the seniors themselves can afford to pay for them out of pocket (because if they can't, means testing obviously wouldn't apply to them).

The final chapter, as well as little blurbs throughout the book, focuses on how to position your investments to prepare for the collapse that Peter thinks is coming. I don't really have any assets to invest so this is not really applicable in my case, but it was a really interesting read. He recommends a "three-legged stool" of quality dividend paying stocks chosen for their ability to profit from the collapse, cash and bonds in countries with sound monetary and fiscal policy, and gold and gold mining stocks.

Perhaps the most interesting part in this book was an appendix which briefly reviewed the history of monetary policy in the United States, including numerous Supreme Court citations. There's been a huge argument lately over whether it is even legal for the government to produce paper money, since the constitution declares that states can only make gold and silver legal tender and prohibits government from emitting "bills of credit." I think Peter shows conclusively and indisputably that paper currency is illegal according to the constitution. Of course, it doesn't matter because the Constitution today says whatever a few robed political appointees say it says. Ah well...

As (I think) with all books I read, I have a couple areas of disagreement with this book. The biggest one was on the issue of birthright citizenship. Peter went through advocating a bunch of great reforms that would move the US much closer to an open and rational immigration policy, and then in a final paragraph he decided to just throw in (what felt to me like) "Oh, and by the way, we should end birthright citizenship." He doesn't really defend it at all, or even argue why it's necessary. It's just thrown in there as a solution without a problem, and I happen to think that government solutions to non-existent problems are very dangerous. On top of that, ending birthright citizenship would visit massive bureaucracy on every birth in the US. It would be a boon for attorneys. We'd need to end up with a national registry of citizens and/or a national ID card. We'd end up spending a fortune to figure out who is and who is not a citizen. And for what? No benefit whatsoever that I can see. A lot of people, I think Peter included but I don't remember for certain, argue that the 14th Amendment made birthright citizenship the law of the land. This is just not true. There has been a long tradition of birthright citizenship in the US before the 14th Amendment, and going back to the common law of England and continental Europe. It's a wonderful, unambiguous, bright line rule. It needs to stay. If you're still convinced we need to end birthright citizenship, please google "birthright citizenship and the battle over illegal immigration cato" and watch the amazing presentation the Cato Institute hosted on the subject on October 25th, 2010. If that doesn't change your mind, I don't think anything will.

But despite that minor criticism, I thought the book was very sound. For someone who likes their public policy reading spiced with a little bit of investment advice, I think it's probably the only way to go. And, by the way, Peter's dad, Irwin Schiff, wrote a fantastic comic book decades ago that you can now get online for free (just google "How An Economy Grows And Why It Doesn't"). So if you don't have money to pick up "The Real Crash," be sure to at least check that out.

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A. D. Thibeault
A Brief Summary and Review
Reviewed in the United States on May 27, 2012
Verified Purchase
*A full summary of this book is available here: An Executive Summary of Peter Schiff's 'The Real Crash': 'America's Coming Bankruptcy--How to Save Yourself and... (Paperback) - Common

The main argument: Since the housing and financial crash of 2008, America's recovery has been tepid at best. Unemployment has remained high; manufacturing has not returned; personal savings are as low as they've ever been, and personal debt as high; housing is still a mess, and banking not much better; and, to top it all off, government debt is awe-inspiring and seems completely insoluble. According to financial investor, commentator and author Peter Schiff, while all of this is certainly disheartening, it should not come as much of a surprise. Indeed, Schiff argues that all of this economic slumping is a natural result of America's misguided economic policies; including especially the Federal Reserve's manipulation of interest rates, the government's uncontrollable borrowing, and, in connection with this, the maintaining (and even expansion) of unsustainable social programs . For Schiff, these same policies led directly to the crash of '08 (which he correctly and very famously predicted), and are leading the U.S. directly into an even worse crash now. In his new book `The Real Crash: America's Coming Bankruptcy--how to Save Yourself and Your Country' Schiff outlines how America got itself into this mess in the first place, what the end game is likely to be, and what the nation and its citizens should do to make the coming unpleasantness the least unpleasant as possible.

The main problem--and where most of the other problems begin--according to Schiff, is the Fed's manipulation of interest rates. By interfering with the free market value of money, and making it cheaper than the market would dictate, the Fed encourages financial bubbles that then necessarily pop. When a bubble pops, the market needs to correct itself; however, over the past 20 years, the Fed has not really allowed this correction to take place, as every time a bubble pops the Fed has lowered the interest rate even further, causing more money to enter the system and a new bubble to form. First it was dot-com stocks, then it was housing, and now it is government spending.

As a matter of fact, while government spending has reached new and mind-boggling heights in the recent past, it has actually been ballooning in this direction for years, spurred on largely by the low-interest rates that the Fed has provided. The government has used this borrowed money to maintain and extend social programs (such as Social Security and Medicare), and, more recently, bailout packages for failing businesses and entire industries. All the while, the government has been going deeper and deeper into debt. A big part of what has allowed the American government to borrow as much as it has (and to keep on borrowing now) is the fact that the American dollar is the world's reserve currency, which means it is always in demand, and hence people and organizations have been willing to act as creditors in order to get it. For Schiff, though, the sheer size of the debt, and the fact that it is running away faster and faster everyday (and has no realistic chance of ever being repaid) will sooner or later turn investors away from considering the American dollar a valuable reserve--at which point it will lose its status as the world's reserve, and investors will stop investing in it.

At this point, the American government will have but two options. It can either declare bankruptcy, or it can print the money it needs to pay its debt. In either case, an enormous crash will result, for in the first case, an astronomical sum of money that the economy had assumed existed will suddenly be wiped away, and in the latter case hyperinflation will set in, and the American dollar will be whittled down to worthless.

At this point, the country will be forced to start over. For Schiff, this may not be such a bad thing, for, according to him, the nation has simply put itself in an unsustainable position, and the sooner it starts over the better. At that time, Schiff argues, America can finally get back to the small government and free-market forces that the country's founding fathers designed the nation around. While much of the book is focused on how the country can do this now, before the crash hits (in such areas as banking & finance, taxation, healthcare, education, the military, et. al.), Schiff very much believes that nothing can actually prevent the crash from coming, and that therefore, most of the rebuilding will have to be done after The Real Crash.

The book is very easy to read and the arguments laid out clearly and concisely, and backed up with both theory and historical evidence (though a little more of the latter would have been nice, on occasion). The author has done well to bring libertarian views into the mainstream. A full summary of the book is available here: An Executive Summary of Peter Schiff's 'The Real Crash': 'America's Coming Bankruptcy--How to Save Yourself and... (Paperback) - Common

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chris
Peter Schiff knows what he's talking about
Reviewed in Canada on November 11, 2013
Verified Purchase

This guy gives a no bull account of what is really going on in the economy and how to survive the coming crash. The USA is in bad shape and they will not be the king of the hill for much longer the way the government spends money. If you want to have a fighting chance of survival, start with reading this book, and than look for Peter online as he is not afraid to tell it like it is.

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Mr D
Plan for the worst and hope for the best.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 22, 2019
Verified Purchase
I found this to be an absolutely fascinating and original book. I was so impressed by many of his arguments that I found this book hard to put down (it's almost like reading a brilliant novel and you just cant wait to find out what happens next).
It would be very easy (especially for a politician or professional economist) to dismiss this as the work of some free market evangelist, obsessed with making money and ending big government but to do so would be churlish. The points he makes are factually correct and the conclusions he draws are well reasoned.
The western world was pre eminent for approximately two centuries and now much of the power and wealth has already moved to China and the far east generally. However the USA and the EU still seem more than content to delude themselves that nothing of any great importance has really changed. Almost none of the so called experts predicted the financial crash of 2008, and sadly even fewer seem to understand the damage it has done to the western world's reputation for economic and financial competency.
Sadly most people in the western world do not seem to notice (or apparently care) that their standard of living has significantly deteriorated (debt now often being perceived as wealth) and how many of the thing we supposedly value like education are pale imitations of earlier systems.
Will his predictions be accurate? I do not know only time will tell. However, if you own property and/or shares and are likely to be relying on a state pensions and a national health service then you would be wise to consider many of the issues raised in this excellent book. As the old adage goes “Plan for the worst and hope for the best”.

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AmazonKundin
Sehr gut
Reviewed in Germany on March 13, 2013
Verified Purchase
Wie immer alles sehr interessant!
Dieses Buch habe ich für meinen Freund gekauft und es war an einem Abend schon durchgelesen.
Sehr empfehlenswert.

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Amazon Customer
Scary stuff
Reviewed in Australia on October 16, 2020
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I know little about economics. Schiff presents his ideas simply and comprehensively. The mechanics are straightforward, the outcome clear. Must read

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British1985
Amazing
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 27, 2012
Verified Purchase
This book is one of the greatest books ever written, I love Peter Schiff he is such a great guy.

If you want to know what is really going on in the world you need to read this book.

You must buy this book.

If you don't read it maybe your children will in the future!

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Public Policy Spiced With Investment Advice

A Brief Summary and Review

Peter Schiff knows what he's talking about

Plan for the worst and hope for the best.

Sehr gut

Scary stuff

Amazing